There are strict rules in Quran recitation, and any well-informed Muslim would tell you that it would be a sin to deviate from them. Those rules were broken in the video above.
During Isra Mi’raj celebrations at the State Palace on Saturday, a university professor from Yogyakarta, Muhammad Yasser Arafat, was invited to recite the Quran in front of President Joko Widodo and his guests, including government officials and foreign dignitaries.
Strangely, Muhammad Yasser Arafat deliberately recited the Quran to the tune of a traditional Javanese melody.
The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) denounced the recitation and says it was an “embarrassment for Indonesia.”
“In the Quran, it is specified that the Quran was sent to us in the original Arabic. The Prophet (Muhammad) also said the Quran was meant to be read with a Quraisy dialect, so it has to be read the way it was intended,” said MUI Deputy Secretary General Tengku Zulkarnaen, as quoted by Republika yesterday.
The Minister of Religious Affairs Lukman Hakim Saifuddin defended the recitation.
“The intention of reciting the Quran with a Javanese tune is to preserve Indonesia’s traditions and to spread the teaching of Islam throughout the country,” he said, as quoted by Tempo yesterday.
Whichever way it is argued, this recitation can’t look good for President Jokowi, who himself is Javanese and did nothing to stop the recitation. This could potentially open the way for Jokowi’s critics calling him ignorant about the basic rules of Islam, which would clearly be embarrassing for the president of the country with the largest Muslim population in the world.
